Vanilla Cinnamon Pancakes

I came up with this when I got annoyed at the recipes out there that call for a million and one ingredients. Pancakes are supposed to be simple comfort food! Nevertheless, this base recipe gives you a lot of room to experiment and play around. I’ll probably post derivatives of this recipe down the road, but for now, enjoy!

Ingredients (this makes enough for 4 pancakes as shown above).

1/2 cup all purpose flour (or bread flour)
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder (be generous now)
1 Extra large egg
1/2 cup of water/milk or liquid (good eye visitors!) – a lot of people have been posting that it makes for some runny pancakes – try cutting it down to 3/8ths of the cup if that is the case. I personally have no probs with 1/2 cup.
Salt (a pinch)
Sugar (as much as you want. helloooo diabetes)
Vanilla Extract (optional) – be generous. Vanilla is tasty
Cinnamon (optional) – if it’s from a shaker, give it a couple of shakes

So the base recipe for this is quite simple. Mix all the ingredients together and whisk until smooth. The purists here will tell you to fold it so that the bubbles stay, but I says the heat from the pan will activate the baking powder and give you fluffy pancakes regardless.

Use a large ladle to scoop out about a fourth of the mixture into a greased pan (butter, oil, etc) on low heat. Timing will vary for the flipping, but to help you out with that, you can look at the edges of the pancake and if they look like they’ve formed nicely, then it is probably time to flip the pancakes.

Serve with a dash of butter, a dollop of whipped cream, fresh fruits or anything else you please.

If you’re worried about things like glycemic indexes, you can try the recipe with 1/4 cup of oatmeal and 1/4 cup of flour. Be creative!

I honestly don’t see the need for baking powder. vanilla sugar serves as sweetener and to provide the vanilla taste. If you’d like to bake pancakes with bacon or cheese, leave out the vanillasugar and cinnamon.

Easy as pie 😉 And it tastes pretty good (but keep in mind; I do think American pancakes are wayyyy too spongy)

I don’t understand how an egg can make it more fluffy. How does the egg work air into the pancakes? I always thought the role of the egg was to bind the ingredients and provide.. elasticity, but perhaps not?

Don’t ask me the physics of it, but if you whip some eggs for a while together with the other ingredients, the whole mixture gets more bubbles and becomes actually a bit more glue like. Then if you pour it into the pan, it will be less flued; thus resulting in thicker pancakes. Due to the bubbles it will be more fluffy. Another kind of fluffy as baking powder provides, but I just wanted to point out that you can bake fine pancakes even without baking powder.

What a WONDERFUL recipe! I came across this recipe by just randomly “stumbling” with the FireFox browser Stumble feature. I am also wheat intolerant but being that it only had 1/2 cup flour, I opted to try it with my gluten free flour. Because of that instead of getting the “fluffy” style american pancakes, I got more of the european style Crepes! I also live in Belgium BTW and this was just AWESOME as a crepe recipe! Thank you! (For those who don’t know exactly what a crepe is, it’s really just an american pancake batter but with a bit more liquid in it so that instead of being thick and fluffy, they are very thin but never the less still as tasty… and more as a dessert then a breakfast item).

We “Yanks” like our pancakes fluffy so we use a leavening agent (baking powder/soda). If you don’t put any in then you’re really making a crepe. So the British have to decide if they’d rather eat like a Yank or a Frog.

Personally I like my pancakes a little crispy around the edges so I use a hot pan and a teaspoon of veg. oil instead of butter. NO SUGAR in my pancakes — it burns!

Btw, extra egg protein makes the batter more elastic so it holds the CO2 from the baking powder more effectively (like stretchy little balloons). Try putting in no eggs and you’ll see all the CO2 bubble out while it’s cooking and end up with a lousy thin piece of crepe (hah!)

I do love crepes, too, but they are definitely different beasts than pancakes.

I just made these pancakes, and want to say 2 things. The first thing is that the proportions are off. I used a large egg, and followed the rest of the instructions, and I ended up with a very watery batter. I tried to use it anyway, but the product was terrible. I then added more flour, until it seemed at a pancake batter consistency, probably another 1/4 cup. I also added 1/2 tsp more baking powder.

This brings me to the second thing, which it that once I did this, the pancakes were delicious! The best pancakes ever, in fact! I loved them, my husband loved them, and they were very simple. Thank you for a wonderfully easy and yummy recipe!

I tried this recipe and for some reason they came out flat….the only taste was the vanilla and of course the cinnamon….I think if you want the pancakes…use pancake mix…..at least they will be fluffy and have the same texture of pancakes…the flour just was so bland….and I love pancakes….!!!

A little protip for some experimenters. An old family secret (read: we tell everybody, but call it a family secret) is nutmeg. Usually when I make my pancakes I throw nutmeg and cinnamon or nutmeg and vanilla, the pancakes come out with a hint of doughnutty flavor without tasting like a dessert. It’s a wonderful addition for pancakes, waffles, and even oatmeal.

I have been making pancakes like this for over 25 years. i use self rising flour instead. Amounts of ingredients vary with the amount of pancakes wanted. Usually i
start with 1 cup of flour, 1 egg, 3/4 cup of milk and a dash of vanilla flavoring. The trick to very soft pancakes is wait for a few bubble to pop on the cooking pancake then peek under to see if they are starting to brown properly. Then when you turn them over put a pattie of butter on top and spread it around.on the pancake. as the second side cooks test the pancake for softness( tenderness) with you finger tips by pressing on top. When it starts to get soft take it up.. The tenderness is important because nothing is worse than a tough pancake. PS: i usually cook on medium low heat about a two on my dial.

That’s pretty much the same as the french crepe recipe i saw street vendors using in france.

they didn’t measure anything though, and probably added slightly less baking powder, and slightly more egg.

one common thing i saw is they’d use a used gallon plastic milk jug to put all the ingredients in, then they’d just shake that around till everything was well mixed/beaten…

they’d adjust the ingredients so that the batter would end up with the consistency of a plain vanilla milk shake.

they’d have some butter and they’d wipe a folded paper towel to that, then wipe the whole griddle with this paper towel that has a little butter soaked in… so very little butter, a microscopic layer.

then they’d take the batter and pour that out onto their crepe griddle, and spread the batter around with a wooden stick made for the job. (i used a large cast iron skillet, which i would tilt around until the entire bottom is covered with the batter.

then wait until there are some tiny little holes, then carefully see if the crepe is loose by shaking the pan, or sliding a long cake spatula around the edges to carefully pry it loose from the pan. once you can shake it around, you can flip it by getting the cake spatula under the whole thing, and lifting and flopping it over, or you can flip the thing with the right shake of the pan if you’re a pro.

once its flipped, you can wait for more of those little holes, then take it off… orr. wait for the holes, which means the 2nd side is done, and then fold in half.

once folded in half, you can put all sorts of toppings on it. (you don’t have to fold in half, but in paris they made these things more than a foot across, so it was necessary just to keep things under control.

possible topping suggestions (sweet or savory)

ham & cheese
eggs ham & cheese
(any combo of above)
cinnamon & sugar. (let the sugar caramelize)
banana with above or alone or any combo.
hazelnut spread, chocolate
strawberries, or strawberry preserves
grand marnier, orange juice&zest (crepe suzette)
anything you can imagine.
one time i tried it with just Parmesan cheese. delicious.
you can mix & match any of these and many other ingredients.

once you put the filling in, you can fold it like a W so it ends up shaped like a single slice of pizza. in paris they fold it like that then stick it in a paper cone so you can eat it all with one hand.

the nice thing is it can be very simple, just with sugar and cinnamon, or really sophisticated with a half dozen ingredients.

The reason for the runny pancakes that some of the visitors mentioned may have been the different types of flour available in different parts of the world. American flour is generally ‘stickier’ than European flour.

Another difference along the same lines is the use of patent flour vs. clear flour. In the Netherlands, clear flour is the common variety, with patent flour being sold as a separate product at a higher price (about double actually). Patent flour also results in a stickier batter, making it less suitable for the thin crepes or even galettes many European children prefer to the thick American pancakes (I don’t though).

And since I’m typing anyway, just one more tip: replace part of the water or milk with beer. Any type of beer will do, though I prefer to use a nice strong lager. The beer will make the batter leaven slightly more during the baking and it also improves the taste in my opinion. Don’t worry about the alcohol when serving the pancakes to kids. The amount of residual alcohol in the pancakes is less than you would find in many sweet cakes that don’t even have alcoholic beverages as an ingredient.

I did try using pancake mix…with the vanilla and cinnamon, they were very good. The pancake mix I like most is Krusteaz. I think I bought it at Publix. It has been my favorite brand for the last few years. I have always liked plain pancakes because I like to eat my eggs on top of them. I am sure the type of flour I used had a lot to do with the flat unimpressive pancakes that I made. I will stick with Krusteaz’s….I know then they will be fluffy and just like I like them! Yummy!

I subtituted about 1/4 cup of vanilla soy milk instead of using reg milk and extract and the results were delicious and fluffy. My son loved it! (He is HIGHLY allergic to all cows milk products.) Because of this I can rarely use ready made batters and am always on the look out for simple recipes for baking without milk. This recipe was great- kudos.

Why allyuh Yanks so dotish, The Pancake mixture is basic just add or leave out what you want..but the donkeymilk and dem just have to write tatta, anybody who say this recipe aint come out good cannot cook and should go learn to boil water.

One variation I just whipped up was doubled the recipe instead of milk I used the juice from one large orange/water and the zest from it too. I left out the sugar and the Cinnamon and used real vanilla extract, twas scrumptious.

Wow, great minds think alike! I’ve been using cinnamon and vanilla in my pancakes for years! One note, too much vanilla can lead to bitterness. Oh, I also use goats milk in mine instead or cow’s or water. Yummy!

I tried these pancakes this morning, and I found that they were really thin. I had to add more flour, but that ended up making them quite dense and flat. However, a pancake is a pancake so thank you for the recipe.